Home Industry Art and Music Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke...
Art and Music
Business Fortune
23 December, 2024
In a major museum exhibition, find out how Radiohead's album cover artists, Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, are bringing their 30-year journey to life.
The main vocalist of Radiohead, Thom Yorke, and the artist responsible for the band's recognizable album covers, Stanley Donwood, are preparing for their first museum display in the summer. The display, which is titled this is what you Get in reference to the well-known line from Karma Police, will debut in August at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
Along with never-before-seen materials, including sketchbooks, diaries, and faxed letters between Yorke and Donwood, the exhibition will feature thirty years of Radiohead's album art. Additionally on exhibit will be artwork from Yorke's previous band, The Smile, as well as his solo endeavors.
Donwood, whose actual name is Dan Rickman, considers how they came to be honored in a museum after creating the gasping resuscitation dummy for The Bends thirty years ago. He quips that they bonded over graphic design rather than conventional fine art when they initially met at the University of Exeter.
Donwood had been busking and hitching after graduation when he reconnected with Yorke, who in 1993 asked him to create a record sleeve. They frequently used cutting-edge technology, such as early Apple Macs, to edit photos as part of their experimental creative process. Photographing a resuscitation dummy in a hospital storage room—a lucky discovery on short notice—was the inspiration for the cover of The Bends.
Donwood, who is currently based in Brighton, says the upcoming exhibition is a fitting tribute to their long-standing artistic collaboration, but it feels surreal.